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Run Your Car With Wood Chips

Feb 9, 2010 08:00 PM

Forget electric cars, quit mixing your at-home biodiesel; just attach one of Dutch John's handy wood gasification contraptions to the back of your car and fuel your transportation with backyard wood chips.

Modified blue sedan with metal tanks in the truck bed, parked in a snowy environment. Says DVICE,

"This old Volvo modified by a guy calling himself Dutch John, uses a popular WWII process called wood gasification, where freshly cut wood chips are heated until they release gasses that can be used to run the engine.

The catch is that you need to heat the wood up to around 2,500 degrees F, so you probably don't want to mount the gasification unit under your seat.

A typical 60 pound load of chips is good for about 60 miles, so the range is comparable to electric cars."

More detailed information on the process can be found at Low Tech Magazine.

Yellow car on a road with luggage on the roof, surrounded by flowers.

Diagram of a cooling unit and gasifier system with labeled components.

Red vintage car parked on a paved driveway surrounded by greenery.

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